Cox Blocks Outgoing Email As Spam
Let me preface this by saying that I think Cox is the best home internet service I’ve ever dealt with. It’s fast and reliable and most importantly you always speak to someone for whom english is a first language. They answer the phone quickly and for the most part I don’t have any problem with them.
Ok Here’s a great one. I was with a client. We do computer service as well as web design and hosting. He has been complaining, since he started using his new @domainname.com email address instead of his @cox.net address, about messages not being received by people he was sending to. Since he is using a Cox home connection for internet he has to use smtp.west.cox.net to send anything on port 25. All email has to go through Cox unless he uses an alternate port email service…
Ok enough background. Today he calls me and says his emails are all bouncing back to him. I ask him to send me the bounced message (via another account).
Here is the message he recieved. Highlights are mine.
Your message did not reach some or all of
the intended recipients.
Subject: FW: Here are
the IO’s and Posting Instructions for the 2 offers.
Sent: 5/3/2007 4:15
PM
The following
recipient(s) could not be reached:
‘Yan Herndon’ on 5/3/2007 4:15 PM
552 unFF1W00S1Vdu980000000 This
message was undeliverable. This message
has been found to be a potential spam message, and has therefore been
blocked. Please visit http://coxagainstspam.cox.net
for more information.
So I go take a look at the page and blah blah we are protecting you, blah blah. I tell him to call cox and ask them what’s up. I figure that since he is in the mortgage biz and there is a link to his web site in his signature maybe its just close enough to get caught.
So he calls them up. Tells the above… All the first level techs can’t figure anything out etc. He pushes harder. (the guys a salesman…) Finally he get’s second level techs on the phone and they tell him a ring of stories. Finally the tech is getting frusterated. He says the only thing we have changed is that now we send a bounce notification back to the customer. Before we didn’t do that. We just blackholed the email.
Umm. Did I hear that correctly. Cox did not per RFC standards deliver a bounce notification? They simply deleted emails THAT WERE FROM IT’S OWN CUSTOMERS.
I understand that they have to fight spam etc. I know that they deal with mostly computer illiterates. But seriously. Blackholeing an email, especially one that isnt spam is almost immoral. Unethical. And definatley not cool. Ok you want to have 100% email delivery (yeah right) then you pay a premium for Biz class service.
Now I can’t tell how many hours I’ve wasted trying to figure out where these lost emails went or who was blocking them etc because a simple notification wasn’t delivered.